“They spend like an hour, ‘we’re going to repeal Obamacare.’ Okay. And then what are you gonna do? Well, then we’re going to repeal it and we’re going to give you something great. Okay. What? Well, something.”

“You watch the press conference and what you realize is they got no plan. They want to repeal because ideologically they’re opposed to the idea of helping these 20 million people get health insurance. It’s not like they don’t even have a pretense of a plan. They don’t even have a semblance of a plan. There’s not even a hint of a plan. Not even a mote. Not even a—there’s no plan. Nothing, zero, nada.”

Before leaving DC for their usual four-day weekend, the Republican-dominated Congress voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) and replace it with … nothing. Don’t panic, you still have health insurance; the president quickly vetoed the GOP bill.

While this is the first time the Senate passed such a bill, the GOP-dominated House has voted to repeal the ACA sixty-two times.

“Adults who are obese now outnumber those who are merely overweight, according to a new report in the journalJAMA Internal Medicine.

A tally by researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis estimated that 67.6 million Americans over the age of 25 were obese as of 2012, and an additional 65.2 million were overweight.”

“. . . GOP congressional leaders are promising to act immediately on their budget-slashing ideas when 2015 begins. High on their list, according to the New York Times, is implementing Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan to ‘overhaul’ Medicare by replacing it with ‘premium support’ vouchers designed to privatize the system over the coming decades. They will also form a commission to examine ‘options’ for Social Security, which Ryan has also long favored privatizing.”

— “Get ready for Ryancare, America! Why GOP’s all set to end Medicare as we know it,” Joan Walsh, Salon

Related:

“Yes, the Republican Obamacare Strategy Will Kill People,” Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine

‘There is no logic in attacking something that has a proven track record,’ he told BBC News.

He said he had studied the Indian astrological system Iahiri and the way it was used by that country’s government and recalled how Chris Patten, Britain’s last governor of Hong Kong, had an official astrologer, whom Mr Tredinnick had consulted while on a parliamentary delegation there.”

Last week the Senate Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging held a hearing on “What the US Health Care System Can Learn from Other Countries.” Republican Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina knows all about health care, probably due to his distinguished career selling lawnmowers. Mr. Burr made the usual counter-factual GOP assertions about healthcare delivery, thinly disguised as questions to Dr. Danielle Martin, MD, Vice-President of Medical Affairs & Health System Solutions at Toronto’s Women’s College Hospital. Dr. Martin immediately administered reality therapy (above).

Senator Burr: “On average, how many Canadian patients on a waiting list die each year? Do you know?”

Dr. Martin: “I don’t, sir, but I know that there are 45,000 in America who die waiting because they don’t have insurance at all.”

More:

“Watch an expert teach a smug U.S. senator about Canadian healthcare,” Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times